Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 251 



ceived. They bitterly resented the action of the 

 government, which, in their eyes, failed to properly 

 protect them, and yet sought to keep them out of 

 waste, uncultivated lands which they did not regard 

 as being any more the property of the Indians than 

 of their own hunters. With the best intentions, it 

 was wholly impossible for any government to evolve 

 order out of such a chaos without resort to the ulti- 

 mate arbitrator the sword. 



The purely sentimental historians take no ac- 

 count of the difficulties under which we labored, nor 

 of the countless wrongs and provocations we en- 

 dured, while grossly magnifying the already la- 

 mentably large number of injuries for which we 

 really deserve to. be held responsible. To get a fair 

 idea of the Indians of the present day, and of our 

 dealings with them, we have fortunately one or two 

 excellent books, notably " Hunting Grounds of the 

 Great West/' and "Our Wild Indians," by Col. 

 Richard I. Dodge (Hartford, 1882), and "Mas- 

 sacres of the Mountains," by J. P. Dunn (New 

 York, 1886). As types of the opposite class, which 

 are worse than valueless, and which nevertheless 

 mfight cause some hasty future historian, unac- 

 quainted with the facts, to fall into grievous error, 

 I may mention, "A Century of Dishonor," by H. 

 H. (Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson), and "Our Indian 

 Wards," (Geo. W. Manypenny). The latter is a 

 mere spiteful diatribe against various army officers, 

 and neither its manner nor its matter warrants 

 more than an allusion. Mrs. Jackson's book is 



